Plutarch, Dionysius, and the Creation of Romulus

By taking account of some particular idiosyncracies in Plutarch’s account of Romulus, and applying the revised understanding of archaic Rome that recent archae- ological advances have brought about, this essay proposes historical contexts for the creation of the stories that became episodes in the life of the first king. It resists the idea, recently proposed, that the story of Romulus was already in existence in the eighth or ninth century BC, and it emphasises the importance throughout antiquity of performance at public festivals as a means of creating and developing myths.